Long view of the gardens. This area used to be 6 small villages but Nicolas Fouquet bought them all for the land to build his chateau and then gave the villagers all jobs on the estate both building and maintaining it. Apparently 18,000 people worked on the chateau and gardens during the building phase. After he was arrested who knows what happened to the villagers? Notice the moat like pond which surrounds the chateau and the grand staircase leading to the gardens.